Not quite QPP, but not exactly Romantic = Appromour
My partner and I of whom I am married to ( @cheettai ) have been trying to figure out how to define our relationship after we both made some new self-discoveries. So I came up with the word Appromour to describe our relationship (More on this after definition and the general usage). It is a portmanteau made of the words Approximate (ie close to actual, but not completely accurate or the same, or notably different but strikingly similar to) and the word Amour meaning love.
Appromour describes a relationship or partner in which you have relationship that is not romantic, it *may* not quite fit into you “typical” idea of qpp either as well. Its a way to describe a relationship that *may* seem like a romantic relationship to yourself or even outside observers. It looks like and may be very close to a romantic relationship but decidedly still not romantic.
QPP and Appromour can be used *somewhat* interchangeably, but are differentiated by the fact you may feel something oddly similar to romantic attraction and/or even partial or fleeting romantic feeling. Due to these feeling you may also desire or just be comfortable expressing and/or performing any number of way romantically. Even if a relationship manages to hit some, many or even all of the “traditional” notes of a “typical” romantic relationship, it still may never feel quite right to call it romantic, then this may be an Appromour relation. This can even mean you feel many of the forms of attraction for said person/people or even desire it enough and feel comfortable with a partner(s) to perform most or all of them, but ultimately you may not feel this way consistently or just off enough that romantic is still wrong. You could feel this way about any non romantic partner(s) that you feel any attraction to and you desire to partake in romantic expression and/or activities but you know it not an actual romantic relation even if may seem or feel similar.
So my Partner discovered they were Lithro and I have been grappling with the fact that I was some form of grey romantic for sometime. All we knew is that we did love each other but it became clear that not in the way the “traditional” romantic love would indicate (ironically despite a lot of people thinking we are such great example of romantic love). We knew we wanted to be with each other, we knew that we are easily “life companions” but not exactly Romantically. We desired to fulfill a romantic performance and even had occasionally expressed earnestly what one would expect from a traditional romantic relation. However problem was we didn’t feel like we actually could ever achieve that level of “authentic” romantic relationship personally that we both desired and people expected.
The very word romantic, carried a lot of baggage and weight that was hard to live up to, even when you can feel part of what makes it up. This was especially tough on my partner who felt inadequate with a relationship that was even just *called* romantic, but we struggled because we felt QPP didn’t either. It didn’t really work for how we felt due to how we expressed our relationship. It seemed off for both our personal definitions of a QPP, so after a lot of talk I deiced that it would help my partner and to a lesser extent myself to find a new term to express our relationship. I didn’t want to use “pseudo” as it had too much negative weight and could delegitimise the types of other love we felt for each other. We felt that we had something that felt like something at least rather close to romantic, an approximation of it even...and so the word Appromour was born.
I hope this helps someone else out there and if so I hope it find them easily as well. For those wondering, as for the my relationship this simple redefining has done wonders and has lifted a lot of baggage off of us. Our relationship has been recovering quite well and I am personally chuffed with how thing are moving forward now.
Cheers for Reading and please re-blog this to help others that would benefit from finding this term so we can save them a lot of misery & grief.
